[OSM-legal-talk] Please enable commercial use

[Peter Miller]

> Date: Wed, 07 May 2008 09:00:22 +0200
> From: Sebastian Spaeth <Sebastian at SSpaeth.de>
> Subject: Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Please enable commercial use
> To: "Licensing and other legal discussions."
> 	<legal-talk at openstreetmap.org>
> Message-ID: <48215386.4010700 at SSpaeth.de>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
> 
> Frederik Ramm wrote:
> > I think the biggest problem for commercial users is probably the fact
> > that they can't get legal info from us - if they ask "can we do X"
> > then our response will always be "read the license and ask a lawyer".
> 
> I agree, that is very unsatifactory. It is even inconvenient to me as a
> private person, and it is a killer argument for commercial firms.
> 
> > If they say "but I would really like to do X, if you give me in
> > writing that I can do X I'll give you $10.000 and print OSM adverts on
> > every GPS I sell", then we still cannot say it because we're not the
> > owners of the data.
> 
> In Linux that problem is solved by companies bying their product from
> Redhat, including some kind of insurance that RedHat provides. If there
> are legal hassles, then Redhat would be sued and RedHat would have to
> deal with the 20000 copyright holders and not the end-user (if you are
> not SCO and live in a parallel universe).
> 
> spaetz

Personally I think the biggest gap in OSMF at the moment is the lack of
available committed legal brains. 

As far as I can see OSM has gone through two phases and is entering a third.

Firstly, as a techie dream, where the main activity was creating a set of
tools and a DB to hold the results and start seeding it with data.

Then a community building phase where the community started collecting data
and improving the tools.

Now we are entering a 'user' phase where we have something of value that
people may want to use and may also wish to attack. In this new phase we
need to change the emphasis again, this time to a more legal angle. We are
of course entering a commercial phase now, with CloudMade getting funding.

I believe that OSMF urgently needs to appoint a paid legal brain to work
on-behalf of the foundation to support the project, to answer these
questions and to build the FAQ and Use Cases etc. The person should be
legally responsible to the foundation for their actions and with a medium
term contract, ie >1 year, possibly they should be a director with similar
responsibilities to a Legal Council. I know that that person may be
expensive (although this would not be a full time role.

I realise that the OSMF is taking external legal advice at the moment, but
progress seems very slow and the person is not available to build the FAQ or
answer questions etc. 



Regards,




Peter